Apple is sorry (again) over MobileMe

Apple's new MobileMe service suite has lost some emails. And the company is very sorry.

The consumer electronics giant said one per cent of users have permanently lost some of the email messages sent to them between 18 July and 22 July.

Apple has established a MobileMe status page. This is to be updated every other day - at the insistence of CEO Steve Jobs - and outlines steps the company taking to restore the service to full health after a "rocky start".

In a posting made on Friday, Apple explained a "serious problem with one of our mail servers" on 18 July blocked around one in 100 members from accessing to their MobileMe mail accounts.

Apple was able to restore full web and mobile access to email accounts to around half the affected users by Saturday. However, it said some of their messages may have been lost forever.

"We've restored full email history (minus the approximately 10 per cent of mail received between July 18 and July 22 which may have been lost) and the ability to access email from a Mac, PC and iPhone, to over 40 per cent of these users, and expect the remainder to be restored in the next few days," Apple said in a status message published on Sunday.

The mail glitch is the third snafu to hit MobileMe, which launched on 9 July. Sync-ing and billing problems have also affected many users. Some European users who signed up to the free trial version of MobileMe were billed even before the trial came to an end, forcing Apple into issuing refunds.

Members signed up to Apple's previous .Mac services were signed up to MobileMe, which adds support for Outlook and push email to the iPhone, to a range of storage, calendar, mail and photo services previously marketed to users of Apple's desktop and laptop PCs. ®